A Night With Mr Walker
by AntipodeanOpaleye
Summary: The most important discussion of his life is one he won’t remember in the morning. Movieverse.


**Title:** A Night With Mr. Walker

**Author:** AntipodeanOpaleye

**Rating:** PG-13

**Disclaimer:** Everything you recognize from any other source either doesn't belong to me or is a purely coincidental occurrence. Anything that you've never seen probably belongs to me. I write for enjoyment and no copyright infringement is intended.

**Summary:** The most important discussion of his life is one he won't remember in the morning. Movieverse.

**A/N:** The result of one of my jobs, and reading about potential plot directions for _Iron Man 2_. I've been trying some things out with tone, and I need to work on overcoming my hate for writing dialogue. This is exercise number one. For the **pepperony100** Prompt #30 – Drink.

* * *

"You're a quiet one. Strong 'n silent type. Respectable, I like that."

There was no response, there was _never_ a response, but in the reality of Tony Stark, this was not unusual. He argued with robots, and had daily conversations with the program that ran his household. Speechlessness was not outside the norm.

"But these days," he continued, gesturing wildly towards his captive audience, "you gots ta stand up for yourself. Make yourself heard. It's a, a… it's a…" he trailed off, swallowing hard on another swig of scotch, fighting the instinctive protest of his throat against the burn, the one he'd learned to ignore until he became to inebriated to remember learning it in the first place. "S'a dog-eat-dog world out there, ya know? And you gotta, grab it by the balls," he grabbed with his fist at a testicle made of air, shaking it around for emphasis, "and show it who's boss."

"Initiative, baby." he smirked as he knocked a bit more of the caramel-colored liquid back, leaning against the headboard of his bed and missing his pillow completely as the mouth of the bottle popped loud and wet from between his lips. "It's about takin' the first step and makin' a grab at what's yours."

Eyes feral, he slammed his hand against the mattress, barely feeling the splash of amber escaping the fifth in his fingers as his fist sank into the give of his bed. "Which is why it doesn't make any sense!" he exclaimed, shaking his head fervently against the unnamed injustice of the universe. "No sense. You take the initiative, you give 'em the world on a silver fucking platter, and all you get's the goddamn platter, smack back in the face without so much as, as, as…" he trailed off, stroking lightly at the facial hair that was growing unruly upon his chin, abandoning his train of thought as the alcohol derailed it from its tracks.

"The story's never about the hero, izzit?" he spoke slowly, as if his revelation was as profound as any other, rivaling the Sermon on the Mount, or Luther's 95 Theses. "Not really. Really, it's all about the leggy redhead with the pretty eyes." His own eyes lost focus as he slipped into the images dancing across his consciousness, full of messy buns and flushed cheeks and freckles. "Peter Parker nailed that motherfucker on the head, he did. Nailed it on the _head_."

"I know you're not from around here," he tilted his head to his companion in semi-courteous deference, "but it's a universally accepted truth, isn't it? The hero gets the girl."

He rolled back his shoulders, leaning dependently on the hand-carved intricacies of his bed frame and sliding against it so that he could sit up more respectably. "The hero _always_ gets the girl. The hero could have anyone he wants, but he always gets the one girl who's been there with him from the beginning. The one who cleans up his messes and worries about 'im when he's gone and picks the carrots outta his soup when they're too mushy from the broth," he mimes grabbing something small with the tips of his fingers, "and knows how he likes his espresso. The hero gets _that_ girl, every time."

He exhaled deliberately, taking his time, entirely unaware of the way his lips vibrated sloppily as the air passed through. "Am I just a shitty hero, d'you think?" he asked, uncharacteristically self-conscious, eyeing his confidant warily, trying to gauge the reaction his question would have, which predictably was none at all. "Maybe I broke the hero rules that entitle you to the part where you get the girl. Maybe…" he coughed, bile searing in his gut as he jerked with the force of it. "Maybe, if you make the problems you end up solving, then you don't get to be a hero. Maybe if you're saving the people who are in danger because of you in the first place, it's not heroism." He sloshed the liquor as he waved his hand in disgust, in self-deprecation, bathing his forearm in the sticky scotch, the liquid drying uncomfortably and hardening on the mass of hairs that graced his skin. "Maybe then, it's just damage control.

"But even if I'm just the boss with a shitty hero thing going for me on the side, she's still supposed to be with me, right?" He asked desperately, imploring the silence, the emptiness, not even waiting for a response from the only friend he seemed to have left. "That's how it works. We've spent years making fucking googly eyes at each other. I've played the jealous boyfriend for at least half the time she's worked for me. She doesn't date – wait, scratch that, _didn't_ date." He spat the residual scotch held in his bottom lip out in disgust at the acknowledgement. Not that he was bitter. "She never dated. Ever. She always stood above me just right when I was workin' in the shop, under the car… just right up that slinky little skirt so I could see… and she knew it!" He leapt out of bed with the exclamation, leading his companion to follow in his stead, pacing back and forth as he flailed wildly, narrowly missing a head-on collision with his dresser as he traipsed about his bedroom. "She had to've known it! And what else does that say but that she wants me? That the sexual tension's only foreplay, and that one day when it kills us both it'll be over and she'll beg me to take her to bed and fuck her fucking brains out. That's the only thing it means! I've seen her entire underwear collection from in between her legs, for Christ's sake! That means she fucking wants me! _That's_ what that _means_!"

He ended up staring unwittingly at himself in the mirror, which he had to press his nose against to make out a semi-focused image from. "And who wouldn't want me?" he asked his reflection more than anything else. "I'm filthy rich, I'm powerful, I'm successful, 'm a fucking legend! And fuck if I'm not damn good looking, because I am. I am a catch, goddamnit. I am one _hell_ of a catch."

"And it's her loss, isn't it?" he reasoned as he hoisted himself to sit on the top of his dresser, his back to the glass. "It's her loss. Because I'd have treated her like a motherfucking queen. I'd have taken care of her. I'd've showered her with gifts and attention and anything she ever wanted. I'd have given her the universe, the goddamn _universe_." He turned to address his company head-on. "We would have been happy, you know. I would've made her happy," he asserted, positive of it, so damn sure. "I would've had her, and it would have been slow and sweet and hot and she would have been soft and her eyes would have sparkled and by _God_, I would have given her everything. _Everything_. Everything she deserves."

Somehow, he managed to fall backwards onto his bed again before anything else made sense. He didn't know why is face was wet; whether it was the liquor from the bottle and he'd just aimed wrong, or if it was something else, and fuck all if he cared either way by that point. "She deserves better," he whispered, voice heavy and hoarse. "He doesn't love her like I love her. He _can't_."

Curling into himself atop the comforter, he stretched out his hand and considered his loyal companion, glistening in the low light from his open door and empty, so fucking empty and clear; everything was clear. "Know what, Johnnie? You're a good listener. We'll do this again sometime, yeah?"

He was asleep before he could notice that his friend, his confidant, had slipped from his grasp, the bottle rolling inconspicuously beneath the bedposts and disappearing without a trace.

In the morning, he wouldn't even notice the missing bottle of 200th Anniversary Blue Label from his collection, and Pepper will have already siphoned the three-and-a-half grand from his account to replace it before he even thinks to look again.


End file.
